LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Energy Reform Needs More than Ethanol

In "Time to Switch Fuels" [by Frank Lingo, 5/15/00
PP], ethanol is suggested as an answer to the looming oil
shortage and to pollution. It may be that ethanol burns cleaner than
gasoline. However, I remember reading years ago that American
agriculture typically uses 10-12 times as much fuel-based energy to
produce its crops to point of sale as it gets back out in usable
product.

Perhaps certain questions should be asked:. How is the land plowed
or prepared on which that corn is grown? Are herbicides used? How are
they made, stored, distributed and applied? How is the seed planted?
Is it sprayed or dusted? How were the pesticides made and so on --
and what are all their effects down the line? Is the crop fertilized?
How are the potash, sulfates, nitrates and trace elements collected,
processed, bagged, transported, handled, and applied? How, in some
processes, is the nitrogen removed from the air and processed? How is
it combined with hydrogen and other elements to make ammonium
nitrates and ureas? Is the crop mechanically harvested? Transported?
Stored? Refrigerated or gassed? Ground? Processed? Just what is the
total energy input:output ratio for ethanol from corn?

A major producer of ethanol, by the way, is Archer Daniels
Midland, the same company that insists that the only reason third
world farmers go hungry is that there are too many trade barriers to
American grain, How many truly independent full time family farmers
remain in this country? Last I heard the census no longer counted
them. I'd agree that it's time for Big Oil to go. The subsidies and
the wars and the pollution are expensive. But I'm not so sure I'd
want to replace it with Corporate Corn.

I can think of several better ways to reduce dependency on oil,
and lots of reasons:

 Convert cars, trucks, and power plants to natural gas. ...
Burning methane reduces carbon emissions substantially -- perhaps as
much as a fourth vs. ethanol, and more vs. octanes

 Use solar heat for heat and hot water. Use it,, also., for
industrial process heat. It works.,

 Store summer heat in insulated pressurized underground
tanks of water, salt water, or perhaps a eutectic combination. ...
Winter cold could be stored the same way and used for air
conditioning. ...

 Convert agriculture to integrated systems connecting fish
ponds or tanks and livestock and poultry pens and yards to modules
producing fruits and vegetables, all in greenhouses. ...

 Run domestic sewage in urban centers through glass/plastic
tanks alongside sidewalks, where it's digested (first stage can be
out of sight) and moved on to feed algae, snails, etc. -- and fish.
Eat the fish. Recycle the (extremely clean) water endlessly. Enjoy
the aquarium as you walk. Enjoy the moderated climate. Contact Dr.
John Todd.

 Develop perennial corn and wheats not genetically modified.
These would need far less fuel and save soil, especially if crimson
clover or Dutch white clover were grown between corn rows -- also
reducing need for fertilizer.

 I noticed that Clinton applauded the development of 70 mpg
cars as one of the "great answers." But look out for Big Motor. Even
if all vehicles get 70 mpg, with every place on earth slated to have
the same car to people ratio as the US (isn't that the New World
Order/WTO plan -- development of world markets?), fuel use and
emissions, by my calculations, will increase at least sixfold, which
isn't likely to help reduce C02 emissions ...

As for reasons for doing all those things. As Ed Ayres, in his
book God's Last Offers so well develops, we're now faced with
four runaway spikes: greenhouse gas emissions, consumption,
population, and extinctions. Extinctions seem due to culminate by
about 2050, leaving us with a few weeds, pests, isolated specimens,
and domesticated plants, and dead oceans., as things now go. Full
scale reform of the World's energy systems, if it goes hand-in-hand
with drastic reduction of population, restoration of forests,
fisheries, and coral. reefs, reinvention of communities and
development of sensible trade and really helpful aid might help save
something.

JOHN DOSCHER
Lockwood, NY

Familiar Name

I thought I'd seen that unusual name before. I was right. The
index of Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
lists him on 30 pages. Here's one of the references, which may serve
as useful background for his lack of zeal in protecting juveniles'
rights:

"On January 14, 1967, according to delegates from the Rosebud
Reservation, a fifteen-year-old student at the Indian boarding school
named Jancita Eagle Deer reported to her school principal that she
had been raped on her way home the night before by her legal
guardian, a young white lawyer named William Janklow, who was serving
effectively as director of the tribe's Legal Services program, and
was therefore friendly with a number of people who would later become
his enemies. ... The principal had escorted the girl to the hospital;
the hospital records included evidence suggesting that the attack had
occurred. A complaint was made to a BIA investigator, who filed a
report recommending that Janklow be prosecuted. But no help was
available from the Legal Services program, and the case had been
smoothed over by the FBI. In a January 16 report, Agent John Penrod
stated that "it was impossible to determine anything," and Richard G.
Held (Special Agent in Charge in Minneapolis and later a leading FBI
official at Wounded Knee) concluded six weeks later that there was
"insufficient evidence, allegations were unfounded; we are therefore
closing our files on the matter." Meanwhile, Jancita, ashamed when
the ugly story spread, had lost progress in school and finally
disappeared from the reservation. Jancita's stepmother, Delphine
Eagle Deer, swore she would prove that her daughter had been raped by
William Janklow, but she never did. Mrs. Eagle Deer ... died after a
beating by the BIA police, who left her unconscious in a winter
field."

Seven years later, the case was resurrected by AIM members trying
to get out from under Janklow, who was by then the assistant
prosecutor in the state AG's office leading the local effort to
neutralize AIM -- and who had been quoted as saying: "The only way to
deal with the Indian problem in South Dakota is to put a gun to the
AIM leaders' heads and pull the trigger."

Jancita was located and brought to testify in a proceeding for the
purpose of getting Janklow disbarred from the Rosebud Tribal Court.
She did so, and although Janklow "refused to answer his summons, the
BIA refused to deliver the subpoenaed file, and the FBI refused to
cooperate in any way," her testimony and other evidence presented got
Janklow disbarred. (Because it was a tribal court, it lacked
jurisdiction over the white guy and couldn't do anything about the
rape allegation.)

MARK DRAKE
Leggett, Calif.

Think Globally, Grow Food Locally

Thank you for your excellent coverage of the WTO protest last fall
and the IMF and World Bank actions this spring. Many people around
the world have been struggling against these institutions and their
ilk for years. I am proud of my fellow heartlanders who are doing
their part.

I am always distressed when farmers in this country bemoan their
powerlessness: there are too few of us, the forces against us are too
big, not enough people care. The truth is that over a billion small
farmers around the globe are threatened by the power of agribusiness,
not to mention the full six billion of us who depend on farmers for
our food.

On the surface, US farmers seem to have little in common with
landless peasants in Brazil or subsistence farmers in India. But we
have enemies in common: the Cargills striving to control trade of the
world's food supply; the Monsantos that are stealing and adulterating
our genetic heritage; the Smithfields and Tysons that torture animals
and foul our land, air and water in the name of profit. And we all
face the same drum beat repeated by our despot governments and their
expert toadies: We need to compete in the global market, never mind
the social, economic or environmental costs.

Small farmers will never compete in the global market. Believe it
or not, the people of the world do not depend on US farmers for
food.

There is a powerful, growing movement of people on this planet. US
farmers can be a part of it, but not by demanding a piece of the
global commodity pie. We need to live up to our rhetoric: Farmers
grow food for people. The struggle, and the power, lie in food
security and the right of people to feed themselves.

This is what democracy looks like!

LORI HARMS
Madison, Wis.
lharmsway@hotmail.com

PS: Hooray for Margot Ford McMillen, my first read of the paper!
[Women] have something to say!

Beware Gifts

While reading my Sunday paper this morning, I read a couple of
interesting articles. One was headed ''Pesticides still around
despite ban.'' The other was headed ''South Korea to ship fertilizer
to the North.

In the article on pesticides, scientists planted a garden in
ground that was heavily treated with chlordane 38 years earlier. The
chemical turned up in all 12 vegetables that were planted. I presume
that most of us have heard of the ban on DDT. Also stated in this
report was that chemicals in use now are often more toxic than
organochlorines but dissipate far more quickly.

In the item regarding the South Korean shipment to the North:
South Korea was not directly asked by the North for aid and decided
to provide the 200,000 tons of chemical fertilizer out of
humanitarian concern, said Lee Kwan-se, spokesman for Seoul's
Unification Ministry, the government agency in charge of relations
with North Korea.

Personally, I would suggest to the North Koreans to ''Beware of
strangers bearing gifts.'' While much less obvious than landmines,
the results would be just as bad.

Fred W. Stover organized the Iowa Farmers Association that was
opposed to the Korean War, and I later became a member. I am glad to
belong to an organization with the motto: "Peace, Parity and Power to
the People.''

RAY TEEPLE
Davenport, Iowa

Give Us a Break

Thanks for highlighting William Greider's proposal (in The
Nation May 1) to uncap the "taxable maximum" of wage income
subject to Social Security taxes -- and for thinking of it
yourselves. I did, too.

In the summer of 1996, I started using Census Bureau (and, later,
SSA) income figures to calculate that the regressive cap was costing
the system tens of billions of dollars. I told my district's
Congressman -- privatization-pusher Nick Smith (R-Mich.) -- just that
in answering his January 1997 constituent survey. (I wish I'd known
then that Progressive Populist was behind me.) And I've been
spreading the word in letters to editors across Michigan ever
since.

I have one correction to Greider's figures. If the worker's share
of the FICA tax rate were cut by 2%, the 4.2% rate -- almost 1/3
lower than it is now -- would let people with incomes up to $112,000
pay less in Social Security taxes. As the current $76,200 cap rises
(under existing law), that "break-even" point would also rise.

Personally, I live on the Bohemian easy-payment plan (100% down,
nothing a month) -- so I might budget conservatively and only cut the
tax rate 1% or 1-1/2%. This would still give working people a good
chunk of money back, and leave enough to spur businesses to give all
their workers livable pensions and other "secure-society" benefits --
or build a cushion in case the system ever stops deferring its
actuarially-threatened date with bankruptcy.

Help stop privateers like Nick Smith -- and the profitizers behind
them.

JOHN ANTHONY La PIETRA
Marshall, Michigan

Flavor of the Month

The name of your publication is The Progressive Populist,
yet you have been running columns by Arianna Huffington, who is
neither a progressive nor a populist. Her flavor of the month, for
now, apparently is to try to make people think she has shed her
regressive conservatism. Wrong. You may believe that, but I do
not.

If you insist on running her columns, I insist you cancel my
subscription and refund the remainder of the subscription price. I
hoped for better from you when I subscribed three years ago.

En la lucha,

CORRINE SABO
San Antonio, Texas

Editor Replies: If Arianna Huffington has
repented her conservative ways -- and lately her columns have been
populist if not doctrinaire progressive -- we should welcome her
voice to the choir. As we state on page 2, we don't necessarily agree
with all our writers but we think their views are worth sharing. But
if disagreement with one columnist causes you to cancel your
subscription, I suppose we were bound to lose you eventually. Anyway,
thanks for your three years of support.